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Should we save Earth, or leave it? That's the question at the heart of Interstellar, which sees Matthew McConaughey suit up as an astronaut hoping to find other planets capable of hosting human life. Make sure to use the bathroom on your way in: This flick is a long one. Here's what critics are saying:

Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal argues Interstellar "never achieves lift-off." It chugs along at a "laggardly" pace with "unexceptional" visuals. "Christopher Nolan's 168-minute odyssey through the space-time continuum is stuffed with stuff of bewildering wrongness," he adds, calling this movie "a brain-number, as in numb from an excess of abstraction."

What haters like Morgenstern are missing "is how enthralling it is, how gracefully it blends the cosmic and the intimate, how deftly it explores the infinite in the smallest human details," writes Peter Travers at Rolling Stone. Sure, the script "turns clunky," but the plot is "full of deepening surprises." As for the actors, "McConaughey is on a roll. And he partners beautifully with the sublime [Jessica] Chastain."

David Thomson at the New Republic strongly disagrees, arguing McConaughey just doesn't fit the role of Gary Cooper in this "entertainment disaster." Mackenzie Foy, who plays his young daughter, is "the best thing in the picture, by light years." But on the whole, the movie is "a horribly prolonged picture without adequate story or commanding spectacle," Thomson writes. "About 90 minutes in, I was seriously considering walking out."

Kenneth Turan apparently saw a different movie. Interstellar is "altogether remarkable," he writes at the Los Angeles Times. "It's a mass audience picture that's intelligent as well as epic, with a sophisticated script that's as interested in emotional moments as immersive visuals. Which is saying a lot." The images especially shine when viewed in IMAX, Turan says.

Other stories and comments are out there about the Mars missions and how people shouldn't do that, take a one way trip, blah, blah, blah. I'm not saying the planned efforts currently are good or not, but in general, we have over 7 BILLION people. We can spare a couple handsful of people who are willing to build something on other planets. And as for maintaining a colony, yessir, it means people will need to breed and expose humans to other worldly environments and the ones who survive need to be supported.

Fascist_Jack

Nov 7, 2014 10:51 PM CST

It was well worth it. A bit slow and melodramatic in the beginning but definitely interesting. It has that same Batman/Inception plot/pacing/style to it so you can tell the same filmmakers made all three movies. Nonetheless it does really make you wonder if Humans have what it takes to colonize other worlds EMOTIONALLY and not just technologically.

Reader55549798

Nov 7, 2014 9:00 PM CST

I went last night to an advanced showing, didn't read any reviews until today and I agree with the 2 positive reviews expressed in this article. I pity movie reviewers, really. I would never want to go into any movie I wanted to enjoy with the express purpose of breaking it down, taking it apart and examining it minutely with constant comparisons to whatever film history I had crammed in my skull. I prefer the experience of magic to knowing how the tricks are completed. That said, I don't want to say anything to give anyone any foreknowledge of characters and story. I won't go quite as far as Ida Ida below, but I'm not too far from her? position. It is an amazing story, at the end of it all. After seeing it twice now, it strikes me as something I haven't seen in 40 years...a solid, hard science SF film/story, but also with enough of a human story to not make it quite as distanced from the audience as was 2001 (which I saw at 12 and was completely enthralled in AND I'd read the story). Definitely has some plot twists and it was interesting to watch it the second time, knowing what the film was telling you that you didn't know the first time. Thinking about the Dark Knight universe, this isn't a story you'd expect a director with that dark a vision to do so well, imo. I was sadly put off this second time by a horrible IMAX theater experience, complete with people coming in 30 minutes into the film, a seat right in front of the main trafficway that was busy 1/3 of the movie, and not just by the usher/guards who were completely ineffective at warning off the 70 year old man next to me who fiddled with his blackberry at least 6 times during the film. I didn't say anything to the usher, because the commotion from getting his ass kicked out wasn't worth missing any more of the film than I already was. Fuckwad. And all that for twice the regular ticket price. Never again.